Dr. Christopher Exley—one of the world’s leading experts on aluminum toxicity—has shown that chronic intoxication with myriad forms of this “ubiquitous and omnipresent metal” is exacting a high price on human health. Dr. Exley and other aluminum experts such as molecular biologist Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic have confirmed that aluminum readily and actively traverses the blood-brain barrier to selectively accumulate in brain tissues, where it induces unwelcome changes in brain biochemistry. As Dr. Exley has noted, “There are no ‘normal’ levels of brain aluminum,” meaning that “its presence in brain tissue, at any level, could be construed as abnormal”
In light of the fact that even minute amounts of aluminum can have adverse neurological consequences, Dr. Exley’s newest paper—which reports on the first-ever study of aluminum in ASD brain tissue—is groundbreaking. Published in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology, the paper documents some of the highest values for aluminum in human brain tissue ever recorded. Using a two-pronged study design, the researchers measured and characterized aluminum deposits in brain tissues from five to ten ASD donors, most of whom died in their teens or twenties.
What the research team found was startling. The study’s quantitative arm documented “consistently high” aluminum levels representing “some of the highest values for brain aluminum content ever measured in healthy or diseased tissues.”

The international journal Science of the Total Environment has just published a compelling study from the Republic of Korea, where autism prevalence is high. The study identifies a strong relationship between prenatal and early childhood exposure to mercury and autistic behaviors in five-year-olds.